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I was listening again for the first time in awhile to the bonus tracks on the Dirty Deluxe Reissue, and I was struck all over again by the insane amount of control over the balance between noise and structure Sonic Youth had at this time. Some people dismiss Dirty because they see it as an "overproduced" (what because of Butch Vig?) or too "poppy/structured." I've always disagreed on this, thinking Dirty has some of their strangest most abrasive noise on it. I mean listen to it again, and ignore the fact you think the songs are presented as grunge pop songs (although i think most have a pretty weird structure to be called pop)... and listen to what constitutes the "riffs," listen to how the guitar parts of these songs are crazy washes of noise with only the drums and vocals to kind of shoe-horn it into being songs. This record's really an amazing accomplishment in my mind.
And the bonus tracks... which is what I was talking about originally... the instrumental versions are so subtly different from the album tracks that you get the sense of the insane amount of control and discipline Sonic Youth had at the time. Without the vocals these songs, that many consider to be shallow, really pop out as supple instrumental masterpieces. There are some really crazy choices and "arrangements" made on the 3 versions of Wish Fullfillment, and its interesting to see Sonic Youth take that kind of approach... Kind of a foreshadowing to A Thousand Leaves where through SYR and the pre-release shows we got to see songs transform from instrumental to album versions.
I wish Sonic Youth had these kind of recordings for every album they reissued. Although you do get the feeling that the tracks didn't quite evolve this way on every record they wrote.
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